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If the sentiment expressed in Britain’s anti-EU vote spreads further, the world will be a meaner and more suspicious place. This is a very loud wake-up call for those opposed to such a future.

British flags fly in front of the Big Ben clock tower in London Friday, the day after Britons voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union. (Michael Kappeler/DPA / TNS)

Fri., June 24, 2016

You can tell a lot about a political cause by the company it keeps. So it was very telling to note who was at the head of the line on Friday crowing about the results of Britain’s narrow but decisive vote to turn its back on the European Union.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Front, changed her Twitter photo to a Union Jack and declared: “Victory for liberty!” And Donald Trump took a moment out from promoting his golf course in Scotland to hail the outcome as a “great victory” and predict that other countries will push to reassert control of their borders, economy and politics. “People want to take their country back,” he proclaimed.

In the wake of British voters’ shocking decision, there will be a temptation to downplay the negative fallout and bend over backwards to explain the outcome as an understandable reaction of ordinary people who feel taken for granted by faceless global elites in Brussels and London.

There’s more than a little truth in all this. There will be no sudden economic Armageddon in Britain, and ordinary people everywhere are indeed taken advantage of by the privileged and powerful. It should not be a surprise that they push back when presented with an opportunity.

But make no mistake: in the pantheon of political cock-ups, this is a very big one. It may take years to fully unspool, but the effects on Britain, Europe and the wider world will be profound, and not in a good way.

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The glee of right-wingers like Le Pen and Trump is but one sign that Britons (in reality, the English and Welsh, given the pro-Europe votes in Scotland and Northern Ireland) have unleashed forces that may well spin out of control. Anti-EU parties across the continent are already celebrating, and some are pressing for votes of their own on the future of the organization.

And why wouldn’t they? The vote in favour of the “Leave” option shows that the appeal of populism, anti-immigrant feeling and hostility to globalization is spreading fast. English voters, it’s now clear, are as liable as any others to be tempted along this risky path. The whole premise of “Europe” — that the way to fight dictatorship and war is through greater openness and unity across borders — is now suddenly in doubt.

The fear is that this will spread. Trump himself said he sees a parallel between the British vote and the kind of sentiment he tapped into as he captured the Republican nomination for president.

He’s not wrong. Anti-globalization forces have the wind in their sails across much of the world. It may be logically absurd for a billionaire like Trump to pose as the champion of ordinary people fighting against “global elites,” but so far it’s worked pretty well for him. The British outcome is an ominous sign that a Trump presidency is far from unthinkable.

The EU leadership itself knows that the longer it takes for Britain to leave, the worse it will be. They want Britain out as soon as possible to stanch the open wound and figure out a way to get the “European project” back on track.

It’s far from sure that’s even possible, given the multiple crises the EU was facing even before the British extended a middle finger in the direction of Brussels. With the collapse of Greece, stagnant growth elsewhere, a flood of migrants from the south, terrorist attacks, the challenge from Putin’s Russia, and the rise of the right, Europe has not seemed so fragile in decades.

For the United Kingdom itself, the narrow but decisive vote to Leave presents an existential crisis. With Scotland voting by a wide margin (62 per cent to 38) to Remain, the pressure for another referendum on independence will be irresistible. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, says it would be “democratically unacceptable” for her nation to be ejected from the EU when its people are so resolutely pro-Europe. Even in Northern Ireland, there is talk of a referendum aimed at uniting with the Irish Republic.

The ironies in all this are multiple. First, a vote that the Leave camp positioned as reclaiming their country’s sovereignty could set in motion events that would eventually lead to the dismantling of the United Kingdom itself. The so-called “Little Englanders” who backed the Leave side could end up with exactly that — a little England, a diminished and humbled country. Sovereignty, perhaps — but at what cost?

Second, this whole mess is a massive own goal by Britain’s Conservative party and Prime Minister David Cameron, who mercifully announced he will soon step down.

As many have noted, there was no pressing need for this referendum. Cameron promised it back in 2013 when he faced division in his ranks between pro-Europeans and so-called Eurosceptics. He was also worried about a challenge in the upcoming election from UKIP, the fiercely anti-EU, anti-immigrant party that campaigned vigorously for a Leave vote. Cameron admitted that he saw promising a referendum on EU membership as a “party management issue,” not a matter of principle.

Now it has blown up spectacularly in his face and Cameron will soon be gone, to be recorded in history as the man who unwittingly let loose a massive torpedo into the European ideal and sunk himself at the same time. The verdict will not be kind.

It will be up to his successor to try and salvage something out of the wreckage he leaves behind. Britain will have to negotiate a new arrangement with the EU, presumably including tariff-free access to Europe’s “single market,” which takes almost half of the U.K.’s exports.

It will quickly discover, however, that there are no guarantees and that the EU will be in no mood to make things easy for a country that has just turned its back, if for no other reason than to discourage others who might be harboring similar ideas. And any deal will likely involve continuing to pay into the EU budget and keeping open borders, as Norway (another non-EU member) does. In other words, follow the rules, but without having a vote on them.

That’s all important, but in many ways it’s just the plumbing of the European edifice. One way or the other, the U.K. and the EU will work out some kind of new accommodation.

The bigger and less predictable question is what kind of post-EU Britain emerges, and what the spillover effect will be. Sadly, the Brexit vote showed that scapegoating migrants, demonizing foreigners in general, and pointing the finger at remote “elites” can be a formula for electoral success.

If that kind of sentiment spreads further, the world will be a meaner, more suspicious and more dangerous place. This is a very loud wake-up call for those opposed to such a future.

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